Saturday, February 26, 2011

Life and choices.

I came back up to SW Virginia so that I could get my ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) recertification, and sure enough as always happens when I spent time around my fellow medics, I started getting that burning feeling in my gut that I want to, I need to, go to medical school.

So I am sitting here once again researching what it would take to go back to school this late in life.

But then I think about all of the things that I do, all of my hobbies, ideas, travelling, all of that. If I went back to school I would have to give all of that up. For about TEN YEARS.

Nope, sorry. Not going to happen.

I managed to get myself totally overwhelmed this month and not only neglected my blog, but my entire household started suffering for it. Several projects are getting put away for a while – like my mom always says, “You CAN do everything, just not all at once!”

So here’s what’s been going on since my last post…

Mushrooms.

The oysters have hatched! We got a nice flush of oyster mushrooms that I unfortunately didn’t weigh. There have been some further harvests since then which is nice, especially since I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I started that project and have pretty much neglected them the whole time.

I have a much better idea now of how to do this, and will make some major changes to the next attempt at the project. Right now, though, its going on the back burner. The buckets of mycelium as well as my cardboard propagation project is all going to get mixed into the garden beds, and with luck we’ll get some oysters growing among the garden plants.

Easy fix for scratched floors.

I made a new discovery! Well, not really. I’d read it on some blog, somewhere, didn’t believe it, then tried it out of desperation and it worked!

While moving furniture around in my “studio,” I scratched the heck out of our beautiful, old hardwood floors. Instead of crying, I grabbed some walnuts, crushed them in my hand, rubbed the crushed walnuts over the scratches and voila! The scratches appeared to, well, disappear!

Aside from the dogs wanting to spend the rest of the evening licking the floor (I guess they also think walnut oil is yummy), it felt like a miracle cure. Whoohoo!

Chicken update.

Several of my hens are currently laying beautiful eggs. Max was the first, and here she is sitting on her “nest box” that I made out of a Rubbermaid type of container (it was originally their brooder box).

There is nothing like picking an egg out of the nest box that is still warm from the chicken’s butt. Yes, that sounds very strange, but it is truly a magical experience.

Kraut experiment.

Ooooh…I think this is going to be good.

I mixed cabbage, thinly sliced onion, sliced carrot, and beets with a basic brine and have it sitting on my counter, fermenting. One week later it is smelling amazing!

Oh, and in the background you can see a cotton bag I whipped up to make some sprouts. It was an experiment, but you can bet I will never grow sprouts any other way ever again. It was incredibly easy.

Shopping bag class.

I am super excited to be offering an intro to sewing class called “Don’t Fear the Machine!” in which we’ll be enjoying tea and cookies (gluten free, of course!) and making this wonderful shopping bag.

We won’t be covering any technicalities in the class, just experiencing the act of creating with fabric on a variety of machines, from my modern computerized Husqvarna to a 100 year old Singer hand-crank. Date and time will be announced soon I hope!

So that’s about it for now. There have been tons of other activites, but I will save them for another time.